This is the first of two parts examining the relationship, similarities and differences between James Brown and Fela Kuti. While timestamps are given, it's well worth your time listening to any Fela Kuti song in full, and enjoying the complete experience. Why have a few seconds of brilliance when you can have 25 minutes?

Fela hears Brown, Brown hears Fela

James Brown has been compared to Fela Kuti. Commonly referred to by first name only, Fela was the creator (arguably co-creator alongside drummer Tony Allen) of Afrobeat. His music was a riveting fusion of jazz, funk, Highlife, traditional African music, political commentary and protest. Tracks would routinely stretch out for 15 minutes and longer, meaning there would normally be just two on an album. In a similarly prolific career to Brown’s, Fela recorded over 40 albums with his bands Afrika 70 (sometimes spelt Africa 70) and Egypt 80.

Brown wrote, “While we were in Lagos [Nigerian city where Fela often played] we visited Fela Ransom Kuti’s club, the Afro-Spot, to hear him and his band. He’d come to hear us, and we went to hear him. I think when he started as a musician he was playing a kind of music they called Highlife, but by this time he was developing Afro-beat out of African music and funk. He was kind of like the African James Brown. His band had a strong rhythm; I think Clyde [Stubblefield] picked up on it in his drumming, and Bootsy [Collins] dug it, too."

Bootsy himself recalled seeing Fela live and a “sound that I would never forget.” There was mutual admiration among the bands. Bootsy remembered, “He and his musicians thought we were amazing, and that’s what really got me. They were bowing and talking about how great we were, and it was almost like they didn’t know how great they were. They were messing us up. We were like, ‘Y’all are the cats.’" 

Allen said that Brown sent his then-arranger David Matthews to check him out. “He watches the movement of my legs and the movement of my hands, and he starts writing down.” Matthews worked for Brown from 1970, and notably arranged seven of the tracks on Hell (1974). From Matthews’ own account, it sounds like his impressions of Fela’s music and arranging primarily influenced Bootsy’s basslines. Bootsy was with Brown for less than a year from 1970, but played a major role songs like ‘Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine’ and ‘Talkin’ Loud and Sayin’ Nothing’ during perhaps Brown's purest, most bare bones funk era.

Brown wrote that, “Some of the ideas my band was getting from that band had come from me in the first place, but that was okay with me. It made the music that much stronger.”

That visit to Lagos, some have said, influenced African musicians’ playing. However, Allen said, “We'd already heard him and assimilated what he did by then. None of the Nigerian musicians got to see James Brown when he came to Africa because he played only for the rich people in a five-star hotel.”

“James Brown said!”

On the brilliant ‘I Refuse To Lose’, Brown, as he was fond of doing, referred to himself in the third person, exclaiming toward the end of the song, “James Brown said!”

It’s a song that quotes (and misquotes) Muhammad Ali’s, “Float like a butterfly. Sting like a bee,” and also uses the quote, “I refuse to lose", with Brown attributing that line to himself, Ali, Elvis Presley, and “my woman".

Brown was not shy about giving himself credit. Drummers Stubblefield and Jabo Starks joked about how Brown wanted to own the parts they’d created.

“He would come up sometimes,” said Starks, “and, ‘Let me show you, Jab, what I’m talking about,’ and he’d start [playing]’ (...) and I’d stand right there and look at him, and then when he’d finished fooling around with what he was trying to do, ‘You got it now?’” Starks would then play what he was going to play anyway, and Brown would say: “‘You got it! That’s it!’ (...) He just wanted it to be said that it was his. It wasn’t his idea.”

While other musicians took cues from Brown’s hums and directions, the two drummers insist they did their own thing. “We were not playing James Brown,” said Starks. “Clyde was playing Clyde, and I was playing me.”

Bootsy Collins, similarly, has told a story about Brown being “glad [he] thought of” a guitar riff by his brother, Catfish Collins.

Fred Wesley talked about the process of writing a song. “[Brown] would [create] a lick and Jimmy Nolen [guitar player] would interpret what he said and make a lick out of it. Then he would keep fiddling with it until he played something [James] liked and then [James would] say, ‘Yeah, that’s it.’ It would be Jimmy Nolen’s lick but he would say it was James Brown’s lick because James inspired the lick. That happened throughout the band – the drummers, the bass players, even the horn players. James would inspire a riff, a line, that he could own. Sometimes [James’ direction to us] would just be a grunt or a groan or something like that. It was a process but we ended up with some great music.”

All this to say: given this apparent habit of hogging the credit, it’s not impossible to imagine that Brown might have borrowed a few things from Fela.

Whatever the case, Brown and Fela’s music certainly shared many key elements: political lyrics, extended grooves, an appreciation of the One, the utilisation of horn motifs to give their seven-minute-plus songs shape, and a disregard for typical song structure.

Whereas Brown’s motifs were usually in a major scale, uplifting and brought a sense of comfort, Fela’s were just as likely to be dissonant and disconcerting, even if they did bring you “home” to a familiar riff.

As noted in part 3, Brown became fonder of longer tracks in the 1970s. This was something Fela was even keener on. On ‘Shuffering and Shmiling’, for instance, there are no vocals until nine and a half minutes in, when Fela starts humming. (The song also features percussion-style horns around the 9-minute mark, in a style not dissimilar to Brown tracks like ‘Cold Sweat’ and ‘Licking Stick’.) The first vocals on 'Look and Laugh' arrive after 13 and a half minutes.

Let’s listen to some highlights from both artists and consider their similarities and differences.

‘Sayin’ And Doin’ It’ by James Brown

One of the songs on Hell arranged by Matthews, ‘Sayin’ And Doin’ It’ is a prime example of the polyrhythmic duo of guitars characteristic of both Brown’s and Fela’s ’70s work. Each played riffs distinct from one another, and from the bassline, and each repeated throughout the majority of the song.

Brown’s formative funk songs like ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag’ and ‘Cold Sweat’ featured sharp, percussion-style chords. The polyrhythmic duo with more melodic emphasis was first evident on tracks like 'Blues & Pants' (1971), ‘Get On The Good Foot’ ('72) and ‘The Payback’ ('73). Brown and Fela seemed to arrive at this compositional technique at around the same time. Check out Fela's 'Open & Close' from 1971.

In both artists' cases, normally one guitar would play chords, and the other a single note melody (just one note after another – not chords). Fela had this latter part played on a tenor guitar.

Whereas Fela’s horn section was chiefly responsible for the melody, here the horns are largely percussive, adding essentially extra drum hits in the short bridge section from 1:06 and in the outro from 2:46.

The next three tracks were arranged by Brown, rather than Matthews.

‘Hell’ by James Brown

Brown’s tone in his repeated shouts of “Hell” matches the darkness of many of the lyrics: “It’s Hell givin’ up the best years / The best years of your soul / Payin’ bills from the day you’re born, good God / Your body starts gettin’ old.” Brown was born into poverty and worked in his childhood.

The duo of guitars is again a major feature. The notable difference here is in the bridge section, where one guitar plays something approaching a solo around 2 minutes in. It’s briefly the star of the show. Guitars never had that role in Fela’s Afrobeat until late-career tracks like ‘O.D.O.O.’.

Brown wasn’t averse to letting a guitarist shine. On ‘Make It Funky’, Brown says 11:18 minutes in, “This thing would really be groove if it had a little bit of B.B. King in there.” A solo with slides and bends takes the spotlight for the next minute and a half.

‘Papa Don’t Take No Mess’ by James Brown

Wesley has bemoaned the long hours in the studio to nail tracks such as ‘Papa Don’t Take No Mess’, which had “so many changes.” “[Brown] would wear out engineers. But you just had to stand or sit there for hours and hours ’til you put songs together. It was gruelling for musicians.”

In what seems a fairly upbeat song, the title (and oft-repeated lyric of “Papa don’t take no mess”) is given darker context 11:49 minutes in when Brown sings, “Papa didn’t cuss / He didn’t raise a whole lotta fuss / But when we did wrong / Papa beat the hell out of us.”

The full version, which appeared on Hell, stretches on for almost 14 minutes, making it one of Brown’s longest tracks. 14 minutes would be quite modest for Fela, but Brown was still an anomaly ignoring three-minute pop song conventions.

‘I Refuse To Lose’ by James Brown

Around 2 minutes in, the guitar drops out and the song is briefly very much focused on percussion. This is typical of Fela. He used breaks in songs where only drums and percussion would be played – sometimes with vocals, sometimes not. Fela became particularly fond of this technique in the Egypt 80 era on tracks such as ‘O.D.O.O.’ (shortly before 29:00) and ‘Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense’ (from 23:00). He would follow these sections with a blast of horns.

‘Colonial Mentality’ by Fela Kuti

The trumpets and sax combine to form a nasty, harsh motif. It’s groovy but far from an easy experience. While Brown’s jams, through their repetition, could bring a sense of calm, riffs like this one were more confronting than a comfort.

In a similar way to Brown using horn motifs sparingly (the standout riff in ‘People Get Up And Drive Your Funky Soul’ is only place twice), ‘Mentality’’s motif is played just three times. Fela’s riff, though, is dissonant and abrasive. The horns sound like they’re snarling rather than dancing with a smile.

‘I.T.T. (International Thief Thief)’ by Fela Kuti

This song is energetic and captivatingly polyrhythmic, just like the best James Brown. But it’s unsettling. In the long call-and-response section starting at 12:30 (the backing singers chanting “Well, well”, then “Long time ago”, then “Say am, say am”), there’s only suspense, and no release.

Whereas Brown’s horn section would often bring the listener back “home”, each time ‘I.T.T.’’s sax riff comes around you’re likely to be less settled than before. By the end of the 24 minutes, you know each part well, but you’re not comfortable.

While Fela, like Brown, sprinkled humour into his lyrics, his rhythms and melodies were almost always urgent, containing none of the levity sometimes found in his words.

In the next part, we’ll dig into the One, and explore more similarities and differences between the two artists.